Black Licorice
by krazysmiles
Summary: Optimism is the madness of insisting all is well through misery. Hope is the madness of waiting for it to get better. Crane before Scarecrow.
1. Chapter 1

"Crack", Crane fell to the ground in a twisted heap of spindly limbs, his hands scraping against the linoleum floors. The books that had once been in his hands were now splayed in disarray across the floor. Titles, pages and words; scattered.

Jonathan Crane was a boy smaller in stature, arms too gangly, and legs too thin. He was dressed in clothes well worn from farm work, and too large for his frame. His face was long, chin sharp, and eyes a shade of cold blue lacking warmer tones of color. He was often picked on and very seldom able to defend himself. As a result his tongue became sharp, his friends few, and enemies many.

"It looks like scarecrow isn't too talkative." The assertive behemoth was Bo Griggs, a male of well standing "charisma". He had lived his life comfortably unchallenged due to his large size and charming capacity for sports and beer pong. His father was a military man, divorced and heavy handed. Bo had consequently been moved around all his life never knowing stability. He had learned to artificially simulate stability with brute force if only because an intelligent method would escape his notice. Bo and his family had finally settled in Georgia. Crane wished he hadn't.

Bo's hair was well-combed and dark. His chest was wide and his thighs thick. He was a coach's dream, owning every trait that a grand football player should have in physical stature.

"I don't enjoy doing this everyday, so can you please just get this over with." Crane bit out in a cold voice as he pulled himself from the floor to his feet. He hated facing his shortcomings. They became all too evident when sized up aside the popular and the athletic, although they were usually the less intelligent.

Crane watched listlessly as Bo grabbed his shoulders and simply held them immobile. The message was easy enough to understand: Look what I can do and you can do nothing to stop me. He couldn't even hit Bo back.

Bo let his voice drop low behind Crane's ear. "Who's the idiot now? Outside of the classroom who are you?" Bo grabbed the back of Jonathan's head to slam it against a locker.

Crane would have laughed if the pain wasn't so blaring. This was about their earlier class and his earlier deduction of Bo's standing scholarly talent.

Bo knelt down, leaning heavily against Crane's smaller frame. "You're nothing. You are a scarecrow, a brainy nerd who can't even fight his own fights."

Those were the sort of statements that stuck. Those were the statements that caused the mask to crack.

"Why can't you just leave me alone?" he questioned as he narrowed his watering eyes at his tormentors. Crane hated it when his eyes showed emotion. It showed weakness. It was allowing a window of opportunity, a plain of emotion, a moment too sincere. He hated bullies; they made him reveal those weaknesses. They made him feel things he hated. The black bubbling sensation of knowing he was not free to act as he wanted, knowing absolute isolation with haunting familiarity.

"It looks like the Scarecrow's going to cry." A voice taunted from behind. This boy was Ricky Martin, a thinner but well muscled farm boy that lived with a single father who drank more than he worked. Ricky had large arms and lean legs. His hair was not combed, lightly brown in color. His teeth were crooked and his skin was dry and scaly. His eyes were playful, dark, and joyful. This was his favorite game.

Crane spun his thin frame around in surprise at the additional bully. He began to feel as though the yellow tile walls around him were narrowing, that his world was turning grayer. "I hate you." Crane whispered, his eyes squinting, his fists clenching tightly.

He was knocked onto the ground by a fist. His head swirled with painful colorless spots as he forced his shaking legs to stand. A red liquid fell onto the yellow tiles staining the linoleum floor. Crane thought the color would have been prettier had it come raining out of his two assailants. Crane's hand rose to wipe away the blood that was now dribbling from his nose and lips. Red always seemed such a contrast to yellow linoleum flooring.

"I don't care what you think. You don't get to say whatever you want about us." Bo grounded out. His face was red and angry. Ricky's face was stretched, mirthful, eyes too joyful.

"No he sure doesn't." Ricky clamped his large hands onto Jonathan's narrow shoulders eyes still smiling.

Jonathan found the light joy in those eyes strangely illuminating. He could see his pain reflected and he could hear the bully's smile mixing into another's; it reminded him of a look he wanted to have. Something inside him wanted to laugh at his weakness too. It was funny. Yet still Jonathan's eyes held nothing but cold blue hatred, an unstated promise to return that laughter.

The black haired jock in front balled up his hand into a fist.

Jonathan closed his eyes. Even with his eyes closed, there was a promise, a growing hatred that was silent and waiting. It was a monstrous passion that swallowed his pain, and it did not forgive. The fist did not land.

Jonathan's cold blue eyes still held that hungry, laughing hatred that promised to unmake the world. It was hard to say if the bullies understood these small glimpses of inhumanity that they held so near.

"Ricky, Bo, what are you two doing?" A feminine voice called out.

It was a voice that Jonathan had not heard before. He looked up from his wire frame glasses and noticed both "Bo and Ricky" were wearing an expression of magnanimous discomfort. It irritated him that a simple girl could cause the feeling. He wished he had been the cause instead.

The girl was Sarah Denson. Her hair was long, blond, and always styled in curls. Her nose was button shaped and her eyes almond. Her irises were a shade of deep, dark brown. She chose humor over drama, and avoided speaking her full mind. She did not like seeing others hurt, yet was found faulted when her friends became careless. She never had the stomach for opposition. She preferred to subtly redirect her friends, distracting them.

Sarah enjoyed small parties and always left early. Her mother was guilty of coddling and her father of stringent laws. She was allowed to attend, but was obligated to maintain curfew. Seldom did she express her emotions, hiding under layers of comedic statement. She was distant with friends, knowing they would never know her mind. She understood that her friendships were shallow, and was troubled by it during the few times her thoughts wandered to the subject.

"Sarah leave it be. This isn't any of your business." Ricky waved the girl away like a fan waving by the weather.

"You guys are going to get into trouble." Sarah was looking over the scene and assessing the damage.

Ricky and Bo really needed to stop picking on everyone that hurt their feelings. It wasn't practical. She had no doubt that Ricky and Bo were more than justified by their actions. To her the skinny boy looked a combination of mean and petty. His reputation was well known for his distaste of company and sharp tongued comments. It still was unbecoming of such big boys to hurt on a smaller boy.

"C'mon Sarah you know we're just messing around. I mean it's not like anyone was hurt. Well you know, badly I mean." Bo reasoned showing off his winning smile. Bo was all white teeth and lean muscle. A girl often lost her sensibilities when he put those looks to use.

But he was a fawning sort of attraction that Sarah felt was best interacted with in observance and not in contact. He was, to put things bluntly, active on more than a strictly athletic field. He was officially dating Sherry who was a bit of man mountain climber herself, somehow it all leveled out.

"Yes, but you're going to get caught. And when that happens Sherry will be angry and I'll have to hear why. I'll have no escape as she repeats the story over and over again, eating all my ice cream. So really Bo, you're hurting my happiness and my ice cream supplies."She finished her story quickly twirling around her blond hair with a light smile. Occasionally, she made eye contact with the skinny boy rubbing his lip to pointedly glance at him. She might as well make things clear that this was his lucky day.

This to her surprise it only caused him to glare harder at her, chilling her thoroughly. He was, by her direct observance, a very cold and cruel person. She imagined his words would bite very deeply and were likely the source of this skirmish to begin with.

"But he needs to learn he can't just say anything he wants." Ricky whined trying to draw the obvious conclusion for Sarah: They were the ones cable to teach this lesson.

In truth, Sarah found it more likely that Ricky had worked Bo into a temper because he was by nature easily bored and more childlike in his responses. Ricky found humor in strange places when he was bored and even stranger places when he was mad. But Sarah doubted that this was the sort of lesson anyone could ever teach this boy.

"Call it a rain-check then. You can beat him up outside of school later. Get to class or you'll get me in trouble too by Sherry for just ignoring you." She could practically feel the boy with the bloody lip peeling her skin away by the layers. Bo and Ricky may have been trouble makers but this boy had the potential to be worse.

"But…" said Ricky.

"Just get out of here." She spoke evenly hoping to inspire some haste. She was not having Sherry cry on her couch and eat all of her cookie dough chunks out of her ice cream. That was her snack. All of it deliciously hers with the cookie dough pristinely un-mined.

"Alight, c'mon Rick let's leave little miss law and order to her duties" Bo winked, saluting her with a tan arm, Ricky waved pleasantly away at Sarah with a clip in his step, happy for a change in the daily pace.

Sarah turned her attention to the lanky boy who was leaning on a locker with a bloodied chin. Her features were wary as she looked at the careful posture of him. He was clearly in pain, but he was unlikely to attend to his wounds on his own.

He looked at the blond girl carefully, amused at her caution. He was weak; she didn't need to use such decorum. She was friends with the two brutes it seemed and now she was left to clean up their mess. It was ironically stereotypical for her gender. "Just so you know, I don't like you."

She was shocked. He was blunt and filled with meanness. She knew she did not want to help him. It would not suit her best to just leave him. But he might have concussion or something serious like the tendency to tattle and she found his first assessment of her irritating. "Are you alright?"

Jonathan slowly lifted his cold blue eyes to meet her warm green eyes. "I am fine." He grounded out wanting nothing more than for her to leave. But before he could retreat into the safety of the men's bathroom, where he could properly clean his wounds, the girl reached for his shoulder and pulled him into the girl's bathroom.

He felt both a curling mortification and reeling curiosity. He had never been inside a purely female facility; it was sobering.

She pulled at the paper towel dispenser taking from the machine a generous supply of towels. She proceeded to wet them and made the attempt of cleaning his wounds. She neared Crane's jaw line and was soon shoved away, hard, accidentally tripping into the metal egress of a nearby stall. It hurt.

Jonathan felt his heartbeat, thumping inside his chest at a ferocious pace with the closeness between he and this insipid little blond. He felt his breath hitch when his glasses fell to the ground and the little chit fell away from him as he pushed her. "Don't touch me."

She frowned and picked up his glasses, lifting fully off the floor. "Glasses?"

Crane merely stood his ground with his eyes widening in both disbelief and anger as she mockingly shoved his glasses across the bridge of his nose, daring him to shove her back again. He found he wanted to, but did not.

Jonathan Crane was not touched for any other purpose besides being hurt. He had never been hugged nor kissed, hell even his own grandmother wouldn't shake his hand. He was not meant for affection and he guarded himself accordingly. He still found he wanted to shove her hands away from his face and break the fingers into pieces just to show her he did not need the sort of comfort that he had been denied. His thoughts were interrupted when the girl spoke in a voice that sickened him with its wary concern. Pity was revolting.

"Are you okay?" She said the words again because he was not speaking and was uncomfortably silent.

"As if you care." His voice trailed off as he began to move his aching limbs. As he brought himself into a straighter standing position so he would have a chance to better evaluate his position. The girl had blond hair accompanied by warm green eyes. Her legs were long, her curves were there, and if looks were to go by her head was filled with nothing but air. She was nothing more than another one of the school's hollow masses.

"Well that's unfair of you to say." She pulled her lips together and folded her arms. She seemed displeased by Crane's assessment.

"It's really not. All you are concerned about right now is if I'm going to tattle on Brawny Bo, the empty headed dumb bell; and Rick, the small headed dip-stick."

Well at least now Sarah knew what had sent Rick and Bo into a wild frenzy. This boy was not one to mince words. In fact he seemed the sort to relish their hard shape and try to egg others on. But he was right she was worried he would tattle on Bo and Ricky.

"Rest easy. I won't." He was wiping away the blood, not bothering to throw the dirty towels in the trash, allowing them to litter the floor in bloody heaps. The girl was cringing at the site, it was after all a girl's bathroom, not the boy's. He found her expressions amusing as he tossed the crumpled towels nearer to her feet.

She stepped back.

When he felt his image was presentable he dried his hands and reached towards the door. He was leaving.

"Wait." Sarah felt, for reasons beyond her, a need to prolong their meeting. "I have to know. What on earth did you say to them to get them so worked up?" She wanted to know how he had cajoled two boys into fighting so openly in the halls. Sure those idiots fought all the time, but normally it was not so carelessly unplanned.

"It's not about what I said. It was about what I didn't say, what they inferred." He held his position not acknowledging the girl, answering only the air; he was smiling.

Sarah found his smile was frightening. "Oh." She paused. Then she stuck out her hand causing the skinny boy's eyebrows to lift and his curled lip to unfurl; he was not smiling any more. "I'm Sarah Denson by the way." She did not think he would shake her hand.

"I'm Jonathan Crane." He clasped her hand in one sharp movement of his long arm and squeezed. "And if you ever pull me into a girl's bathroom again I assure you it won't be about what I say, but rather what I don't say." He found he did not completely want to shove this girl into a metal stall again, instead he would have settled for squeezing her hand until her joints popped. He liked her by a margin more than he had before, at least he found her discomfort pleasant.

Had anyone else said this Sarah would have been certain they referred to her reputation, but Jonathan Crane clearly spoke his terms with far more seeded unpleasant uncertainty. Sarah felt her blood chill as he released her hand and exited the room.


	2. Chapter 2

Class usually followed along the droll, if not comforting, tune of lecture and assignment. Today the monotony had been broken apart by the misfortunate cacophony of a group project announcement. Due to the proclaimed simplicity of the task, groups were to be limited in size. All was an unfortunate and unplanned disruption to Jonathan's preferred routine.

"Remember groups of two to three only. I want each of you to work outside of your comfort zone." The teacher, was a gray haired elderly man who likely was just as disillusioned by the prospect of teaching psychology as Crane was by the thought of pretending his professor wasn't lacking. Psychology as a subject was a pseudo science, a form of hypothetical guesswork, without meaningful conclusion or hard facts. It was barely a level above astrology.

Crane frowned as his classmates scrambled to reach their usual groups. The modus operandi at its finest. The teacher's sudden bout of team spirituality was yet another side effect of the growing lurch of the bandwagon. The school had recently been forced to work its new curriculum to the recent theme: teamwork. He wondered briefly if anyone considered how disastrous perfect harmony was. In life there were predators for a reason, without them the weak remained en flux, forever at the mercy of their frailty, never adapting. He admitted his thoughts were in and of themselves caught between paradoxes. He hated bullies yet admired predators. He supposed with time he'd find a way to balance the two variables.

The new lesson plan was likely the result of either a mandate from the overly friendly Principal Harris or brainstorming ingenuity of the staff to preform as little an amount of actual instruction legally possible.

Groups were pointless if the goal Mr. Cornellious hoped to accomplish was "working outside the comfort zone." The task would be simpler to accomplish by simply asking the rest of the class to recall their assigned readings, which Crane suspected few actually fulfilled. People will seek out similar personalities rather than opposing traits. Interacting with a person of common interest was distinctly different from working in discomfort. Given the size of the classroom Crane felt his hopes rising that eventually the pairings would allow him to work alone. It was a small and frail hope but it was the only one preferable to his mind.

In the end the class had operated no differently from his expectations. Everyone had paired off except him. Jonathan was once again comfortably alone.

noticed Jonathan's solitude and seemed set to intervene. The teacher lightly placed his hand on Crane's back, dragging the mussy brunette to the nearest group of two.

Crane trained his face to hide the growing scowl as the teacher forced him nearer to the border of society and farther from delightful isolation. He had the passing fancy to hum a low noted Funeral March to emphasize his loss. His urge to curse became nearly irrepressible at the nearing coastal sights of two large hulking shapes of muscle and oppression: Bo Griggs and Ricky Martin.

He thought then that teamwork was in fact an easier means by which manslaughter could be accomplished, or suicide if a person was given the proper treatment. It all depended on personal tolerance really. Crane lamented that his patience had long ago worn away leaving only an empty void. In synopsis he was screwed.

"Bo, Ricky, you boys will now be working as a group of three. I hope you don't mind working together, it seems we have an odd number of students." Mr. Cornellious noticed the two football players shift with discomfort. He sighed knowing that Jonathan had always been odd and preferred working alone to groups. He hoped this experience would help the awkward youth interact with his peers more easily.

Bo's calloused hands tightened against the wooden edge of his desk, knuckles fluctuating between white and red, as Crane approached nearer.

Ricky grinned at Crane showing wild rows of white that spoke of unpredictable circumstance. The smile lacked certainty and bonded amusement and boredom in crooked teeth.

Across the room Sherry Squires eyed Crane and Bo warily. Sherry was the part time, full time girlfriend of Bo. She chose her men based on their ability and her mood, and currently Bo was everything to her. She had trouble keeping steady relationships, just as she had trouble keeping the attention of her estranged father. She eventually found a social supplement for those unmet needs in the duty of cheer team captain, and night time club socialite. She was a tan skinned dream that kept nearly every teenaged boys sheets uncomfortably sticky. She was everything she ever wanted to be Sophomore year of high school.

Sherry's green eyes shifted between Jonathan and Bo in composed waves, brown hair falling softly across her shoulders in managed curls. A frown slowly slid onto her face. "He is going to get himself in trouble again."

Sarah was sitting next to Sherry, doodling on the fringes of a notebook, partially reading the assignment sheet. Sarah caught Sherry's comment and expressed an unfiltered thought in response. "In that group Bo will end up getting suspended."

Sherry chewed at a pink nail, considering the truth behind the statement and the unacceptable results it produced, and acted in a manner so clever it was obscene. "Mr. Cornellious, Bo and Ricky are in my group so I guess if you want we can make a group of four." She was standing twirling her brunette hair, eyes wide and guileless. She smiled sweetly like a sharpened candy cane made from too many puckers and licks.

Sarah admired Sherry's lie. It was unexpected. It was brilliant. Not that she thought her friend incapable, it was just something a bit more structured than the usual. It also unfortunately marked Sarah for the plague, found without the protection of a red crisscross. Sarah did not have a partner and an erie premonition was rising that the who to be was him.

"But if Jonathan's in our group Sarah won't have a partner." Sarah had to applaud Sherry's tact. She reminded herself through a sobering shrug that Sherry was not doing this for harm or spite but love. For altering one's comfort for another's love was the burden friendship. It was a heavy duty, one due recompense.

The teacher awkwardly shrugged his shoulders, feeling surprised and thrown. As he met Sherry's gaze he found there was no other choice but to agree. "Ah I see. In that case Jonathan I hope you don't mind working with Sarah." He smiled, turning to Jonathan and motioned to a blond haired girl.

Jonathan said nothing and simply walked towards the girl. He felt the frown before it came. He remembered this girl. She was an annoyance.

When he arrived beside Sarah and Sherry he pulled forward a seat causing both girls to stare at the baffling casualness of the motion. The seat that once had been Sherry's was suddenly Jonathan's. He sat down without hurry, glanced at Sherry as if to say 'your group is over there', and returned his attention to the flyer. It was unpleasantly odd that in a seated Crane was able to look down upon a standing Sherry.

The teacher noticed Sarah's stunned expression and felt urged to comment. "That is fine with you correct?"

Sarah was not truly certain and found that neither a 'yes' nor a 'no' did the situation justice. She let her response weigh neutrally in the air. "Sure."

"Excellent." Satisfied the teacher returned to his desk and began to issue instruction. "Now everyone, I want you to spend the last fifteen minutes of class mapping out each group members' responsibility."

Jonathan listened to the instruction never once looking back at his partner. He read the handout with religious severity, using the paper as another shield from the inevitable exchange in meaningless words.

Sarah found the silence disconcerting.

It was a void of expressionless features, nothing that spoke to context, no whispered subtext, just darkness. She ventured blindly, letting smoke drift into the wind daring a spark to ignite, not knowing Jonathan's reaction. "So, would you be more comfortable discussing the project with me in the girl's bathroom or are you just a really slow reader?"

Crane's posture stiffened. His thin shoulders snapped to attention and a long boney arm flipped his handout over with a single noiseless flick.

As soon as Sarah's eyes left the paper she found that Crane had already swiveled his body to face her. He was physically distant, but his eyes bore down upon her with a frozen heat made him feel too close.

He allowed his gaze to linger only long enough to make his point clear that her first sentence was unappreciated and improper. "I read at a pace faster than most of these inbred morons, yourself included. I was deciding what action I will have to take in order to complete the entire project without impacting my current work load."

Sarah held her breath for a second to prevent a derisive laugh. No one ever had that much homework.

"Well that's dumb. It's not like it's that much work. We can just divide it up." Sarah looked to Crane, finishing with lingering syllables, drawing the obviousness along stride her speech. She wondered how much work he could possibly need to complete for a psychology project to be difficult.

Crane held back his usual pert silence for more engaging conversation. "Unfortunately, I cannot divide this task equally due to your limited skill set." He did not bother to glance back to communicate with her outrage, or probable shock. It would have been a waste of time. "I reason that eighty percent of the burden will belong to me, while twenty percent is leaning on the high end of your capabilities." He understood from observation that the characters Sarah associated with were well settled upon the lower tier of intellectualism. Making output predictions plummet.

Sarah found that any retort she could have returned would have fallen short of the sharpness it needed. Instead her words exited in a stumble. "I can do more than just 20 percent. I mean." She paused. Her brown eyes were wide and the words flew free. "You really aren't that nice."

"You can pretend to do more. I am not being unkind I am being practical." He drew out a long sigh trying to disguise his irritation. His tact would be more successful with filtered logic permeating his insults. "Being partnered with you will only slow me down. We will finish faster if you are in charge of less."

Sarah felt the words on her skin crawling about, imprinting layers of synonyms: Stupid, idiot, moron. She hated the way it hurt.

He frowned as he watched his words dig deep into girl, likely leaving lasting emotional welts. He felt annoyance wear at him from her lack of understanding.

"I work poorly with others. I find cooperation taxing." It was not an explanation he often issued. It was not easy to say because it was easy enough to observe.

Sarah straightened, leaning against the support of her chair. "Well too bad. You're stuck with me." Sarah folded her arms across her chest, head tilting. "I'm not an idiot you know. I can keep up with you."

Her mouth itched. She wanted to throw the feeling Crane had covered her with back to him. "You're not that smart."

Crane was endeared at her feeble effort to throw her own discomfort at him. It was something he hoped to break open and force into cooperation. "I am not questioning your intelligence quotient, I am noting that you will find keeping up with me challenging."

"I don't care" Sarah found it difficult to say the words and hold Crane's stare. She felt transparent and hollow.

Crane examined her carefully. Her arms were crossed defensively, legs held together tightly. He knew he would not have to try to push her to retreat. His vision met with hers and he hesitated, losing the opportunity. Her eyes were not hard instead gentle, despite her attempt to apply an angered edge. There was fear in them, but no hate. He frowned, feeling perplexed by his momentary pause.

"Ok." Crane almost laughed at her startled look. She was going to be an amusing project partner. He hoped to maximize her discomfort in retribution for slowing him down.

Sarah took in the word carefully, questioning it's intended meaning. "OK, as in we are going to work together equally or OK, as in you don't care if I don't care?"

He could not help it. He smiled at her absurdity, enjoying the blank look. "OK as in I will let you attempt at matching my work, and Ok as in whether you care or not does not matter."

"OK then." Her voice was small and uncertain, waiting for him to make the next move.

Jonathan took her words for what they were, acknowledgments of his role in deciding what was to occur next. "Be at the library at 6 tomorrow. Class ends in two minutes, I don't have anymore time to waste talking about this." He pulled the flyer into a torn binder, held together sparsely with a worn spine.

"6 AM? As in the morning?" Her face went pale.

"Yes. I arrive to school at that time every day to finish homework. Was all that speech making for posterior? It seems we have not yet begun and you're already behind." For someone else he would have spoken limitedly. But he felt irritation rise that something so minute as time would give a person cause to quit. He let his words taunt, purposely crafting the barbs to stick.

"No, just double checking the time. I'll be there. No problem." She was going to prove Jonathan Crane wrong. She was not stupid.

* * *

Back from Comic Con San Diego! I watched the world premiere of the pilot episode of Gotham. I will tell everyone this: it is incredible. The Penguin is perfect, hot, and scary. The Riddler is a coroner. The Scarecrow may come in later episodes. And that's all I have to say about that.


End file.
